Life and Breath
by tsutsuji
Summary: After the battle with Chin Yisou, reactions set in and unexpected feelings surface. HakkaixSanzo, spoilers for episode 12. yaoi.


Title: Life and Breath

Author: Tsutsuji

Fandom: Saiyuki

Pairing: Hakkai/Sanzo

Rating: M

Warnings: yaoi, UST. Not beta'd. Major spoilers for episode 12 and the Chin Yisou story arc.

Disclaimer: The characters and setting belong to Kazuya Minekura and associates. I'm not them and I'm making no money from writing this.

Summary: Reactions set in and unexpected feelings surface after the battle with Chin Yisou.

_AN: I'm still so new to this fandom that I really have no business writing about these characters, so please forgive me if this is horrible and all ooc. I just couldn't resist building something out of the end of Episode 12... sorry if it's awful..._

* * *

Hakkai lifted his eyes from the thick, black "life line" Goku had drawn on his palm, to look out at a view of the world framed between his fingers: rocky hills and endless sky, the last, lone tree of the forest they'd left behind, and Genjyo Sanzo. The priest stood under the tree with his paper fan raised in his hand, still glaring and twitching with impatience even after Goku had slipped out of reach for the moment. 

When both Goku and Gojyo had become so interested in Hakkai's hands a minute ago, Sanzo had said nothing and, as far as Hakkai could tell, had not even looked in his direction. He didn't look this way now, either, so Hakkai began to wonder if he'd only imagined that Sanzo was watching his hands on the wheel earlier, during the drive out of the forest to this rest stop higher in the mountains. Or, if he had been watching them, maybe it was only to make sure they were steady enough to drive the Jeep after all that had happened. One thing he knew for certain: as they drove away from the forest, after the rage and grief of fighting Chin Yisou faded and the present reasserted itself over the past, he had become more intensely aware than ever of Sanzo sitting there next to him.

Chin Yisou certainly did not appear to have done his homework, Hakkai reflected; he could not have known as much of Hakkai and his present life as he thought he did. Anyone observant would surely have assumed he was closest to Gojyo, and used him as the greatest, final threat to Hakkai's sanity rather than as the warm up act. Probably, Hakkai reasoned, the demon had observed only enough to see that Sanzo appeared the be the leader of the group and therefore assumed he was the most important one to all of them. Which was true, of course, as far as it went. Without Sanzo, the rest of them would be wandering without direction on this journey, if they were on it at all. However, that would be true of all of them, and not an indication that Sanzo meant anything special to him personally.

So, either the demon had some insight or instinct, or his choice of Sanzo as the final nail in Hakkai's coffin was simply ironic, because the ultimate result was to force to the surface feelings which Hakkai had managed to ignore with reasonable success - until now. They had been there all along, he knew, since the moment his old life had died and his new one began. It was only now, seeing Sanzo standing there, small and bright against the backdrop of sky and mountains, that he felt drawn to the priest as if he was the magnetic center of the universe.

Hakkai tore his gaze away with the briefest sigh, as Sanzo returned to scolding Goku while he and Gojyo sat on the jeep and watched them in the late day light. There were good reasons to ignore those feelings, after all, because what else could be done with them? What else could he do with the storm of emotions that had been released by having a piece of the past torn out of his heart - which was not, after all, quite as small and cold as he'd claimed it to be? Even if he'd decided once again to go on living after all, in spite of the past, what could he do with this physical attraction that was suddenly so strong he could feel the pull of it even from this distance? He could only set those feelings aside again, somehow - or else riding alongside Sanzo in the Jeep from now on was going to be a problem, at the very least.

Gojyo nudged Hakkai's shoulder, startling him out of his reverie. Hakkai waited for him to say something, but Gojyo just grinned at him until got the feeling he'd missed a joke that might have been on himself. Then Gojyo glanced over at Sanzo, with something surprisingly like his familiar, predatory leer.

"Whether your life is long or short, you shouldn't put off doing things you want to do - y'know?" He prodded Hakkai with an elbow to the ribs.

"Eh?" Hakkai jerked away, alarmed that Gojyo had picked up on what he'd been thinking. He realized that leer was not aimed at Sanzo but was meant, in a way, for him.

Before he could figure out how to protest in some fashion that didn't just confirm his friend's suspicion, Gojyo slipped off the jeep. Hakkai watched with his mouth still hanging open as he sauntered over to the others and caught Goku's attention with one of his usual insults. Naturally, that dragged Goku into another one of their endless squabbles - and away from Sanzo.

It was such an everyday occurrance that the fact that this left Hakkai and Sanzo alone near the tree looked like a coincidence. However, knowing that it wasn't did not help Hakkai decide what to do about it.

* * *

Sanzo scowled after the squabbling idiots, but he couldn't find any excuse to go after them. Goku was perfectly happy to trade Sanzo's fan for Gojyo's insults, and hobbled off on his cast to continue the shouting match a safe distance away. Scolding Goku in order to distract him from the pain and indignity of having a cast put on his broken leg had distracted Sanzo as well, so that he had finally succeeded in ignoring Hakkai for awhile, and in not watching Hakkai's hands... or nearly succeeded, until Goku so helpfully drew everyone's attention to them again. 

In fact, Sanzo found he couldn't forget the touch of those hands, even though it was the feel of them around his throat that he remembered - the feel of them squeezing tightly enough that he actually did black out, trusting Hakkai to know just how much was enough and not too much to convince Hakkai's enemy that he was seriously trying to kill Sanzo.

The last thing he'd seen before his vision went dark was the intense gleam of Hakkai's eyes, deeper green than the trees above them, and filled both with regret and gratitude in that moment. The last thing he felt must have been only the panic-stricken rush of his body's primal demand for breath, but it felt surprisingly like lust.

It had taken all of his trust and spiritual training not to give in to the instinctive urge to fight Hakkai off and defend his threatened life. It had taken even more willpower than that not to groan out loud and thrust his hips up into Hakkai's heat and weight, even as his vision went red and then dark.

For a few seconds he was gone, only a heartbeat or two before his senses returned - hearing first, just in time to hear Hakkai's cry of anguish, so horrible a sound that Sanzo almost wondered if he was actually dead after all. But no, certainly not; he was alive enough to feel Hakkai's weight, alive enough to have to force himself not to wince, not to curl his fingers into the dirt, when Hakkai shifted on top of him. Alive enough to be so hard it hurt and made sparks dance behind his eyelids again, when Hakkai moved. Alive enough to miss even the life-threatening pressure of Hakkai's hands on his throat when he pulled away.

He wasn't sure if Hakkai noticed it. He hoped he didn't, and yet half-hoped he did.

The demon was just a dangerous idiot, too stupid to notice that Sanzo wasn't dead. Of course, the other two didn't quite believe that Hakkai had killed him, in spite of the heart-stopping cry that had drawn them to the clearing (and Hakkai didn't seem to realize how much that meant they trusted him as well, because if Goku had mistaken the scene for reality, one single undead centipede demon would have been the least of his worries).

Hakkai's scream and the voices of the others shocked some of the heat out of Sanzo and helped clear his mind, enough so that when the moment came to pull his gun on the bastard, he was more than ready. In fact, with the flash-fire of lust turned to frustration, shock and shame, he was more than ready to tear _someone_ limb from limb, and shoot the pieces full of holes afterward.

But that was Hakkai's privilege in this case, so he took the time to catch his breath and will the arousal out of his body instead, while Hakkai finished what he'd started three years ago. He watched with less detachment than he liked to admit when Hakkai reached inside the demon's body and, literally, crushed the "life" out of him with his bare hands.

Hakkai's hands...

He could tell himself that it was only his body's confused response to the rush of blood away from his brain, the adrenaline, the weight of Hakkai's body on top of his and the force of Hakkai's spirit, and that it had only felt like the heat of sexual arousal. While Hakkai drove them out of the forest that still seemed haunted by the undead past, he told himself this a hundred times, but it was like chanting a mantra that had no power. It did nothing to release his memory from the grip of Hakkai's hands. Now, hours later, after wounds had been dressed and a meal gobbled down and yet another mindless argument started between the kappa and the monkey, Sanzo had still not managed to empty his mind of that moment.

After Gojyo and Goku wandered away in a storm of insults, a placid smile remained on Hakkai's handsome face - but that might have meant anything. It could mean that he'd noticed Sanzo stealing glances at his hands, but he doubted even Hakkai would react so calmly if he'd noticed Sanzo's reaction earlier. Most likely that look had more to do with whatever Gojyo said in his ear, just before he casually stole Sanzo's convenient distraction away.

After they were out of sight and nearly out of earshot, Sanzo was left with nothing to do but stand there beside the lone tree, looking at nothing, thinking of nothing - or as nearly so as he could manage, until Hakkai came over and stood beside him. Normally, silence was easy between them, a most welcome relief from the noise the other two made almost constantly. There was something else in this silence, Sanzo could tell, but it might be nothing more than another pointless apology, more repentance and regret from the man who had bathed in demon blood to become a demon.

"Sanzo..."

"Don't say anything stupid," he said reflexively, somewhere between a snap and a sigh.

Hakkai laughed softly, as usual. "I don't mean to," he said.

Of course, that didn't mean he knew enough to not say anything at all. Sanzo willed his eyes not to slip to the side, not to seek another glimpse of Hakkai's hands, and of course there was no use trying to see through the smile he knew he'd see on Hakkai's face.

"I only wanted to say that... " Hakkai hesitated, in his usual polite manner, but Sanzo's skin prickled; there was something more than politeness in the too-light lilt of his voice. "I wanted to say, that was not the way I would have preferred to get my hands on you... Sanzo."

For a single heartbeat, hardly a second, Sanzo froze in a rush of panic as deep as the fight for breath and life. Then he snapped his head around, eyes blazing, mouth open to berate Hakkai for sounding like an idiot, for talking like Gojyo or that mindless monkey would talk, making no sense...

It was too late. That second of hesitation betrayed him. He still didn't know if Hakkai had felt or seen his aroused condition earlier, but he knew from the too-placid smile that he'd been caught - somehow.

"Hakkai..." he growled in warning, because he couldn't snap and call Hakkai names, or slap him silly like he could the other two, or pull his gun like he would on any other man who reached for him like Hakkai did now. He couldn't back away, either, and not only because there was a tree behind him and nowhere else to go. All he could do was watch Hakkai's hand come toward him, like some hand of Fate that he would have slapped aside even more casually. He tried not to flinch or shiver when those long, delicate, deceptively strong fingers touched his throat again.

The touch was gentle this time, though, and Hakkai tipped his head and smiled a little more, like a wordless apology for something he had no reason to apologize for. _Stop regretting everything, idiot_, Sanzo thought and wanted to snap at him, just like he wanted to slap Hakkai's hand away, but he didn't do either of those things. He didn't swallow or speak, and he could hardly even breathe past the rush of warmth all through his body, all from the light touch of fingertips that slipped along the side of his neck, brushing strands of hair aside, thumb lightly pressed over his jumping pulse.

The heat that flowed from the touch had nothing to do with Hakkai's formidable _qi _energy. This time, Sanzo didn't have the excuse to tell himself that it was just a surge of blood and adrenaline clouding his brain and setting sparks off on his skin. He only hoped he wasn't blushing like a girl; his face felt warm, but he was certain most of his blood was rushing to another region anyway.

"What the hell are you doing, Hakkai?" he growled, because he had to say something, and _I'll kill you for this_ wasn't really an option after all.

"Living," Hakkai answered, his voice smiling, but Sanzo felt the breath more than he heard the word, just before Hakkai's lips touched his.

* * *

_The End of the Beginning, I guess..._

_(there's a followup scene to this - but it turned out a bit darker and way more yaoi, so it's only posted over at my LJ (link in profile). _

_Also - this is part of a series of oneshots I'm writing, all meant to be pwp's, each focused on a different character voiced by anime voice actor Akira Ishida - including Nanami-chan of Sukisho, Naoji of Meine Liebe, and of course Xelloss, and more. But since they're pwps, meaning explicit yaoi, they probably won't be posted here either. Just thought I'd mention it, ya know...)_


End file.
